1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and method, which register and search image data.
2. Related Background Art
In a conventional image processing apparatus, the user must manually register a keyword that describes the contents of the image data to be registered, and image attribute information such as the photographing date and location of the image, and the like upon registering the image data. Also, an apparatus which automatically extracts an image feature from image data by performing image processing, and registers the extracted image feature as additional information in correspondence with image data is available.
However, in the conventional image processing apparatus, in order to obtain a desired image by a search, the user must assign appropriate image attribute information to all the images to be registered, and the load upon registration becomes heavier as the number of image data becomes larger. Even when the image features are automatically registered, it is hard to obtain a satisfactory search result by that information alone. After all, since the user must assign keywords to all the images, a problem of a heavy registration load remains unsolved.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above-mentioned problem, and has as its object to provide an image processing apparatus and method, which assign appropriate image attribute information to already registered image information in the course of repeating searches even when image attribute information is not assigned to all image data upon registration, thereby reducing the load on the user upon registration.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, there is provided an image processing apparatus comprising:
memory means for storing image data, and image attribute information corresponding to each image data;
image data searching means for searching image data; and
image attribute information additional registration means for additionally registering image attribute information of the image data found by the image data searching means to another image data found thereby.